Review: The Island

The Island by Ben Coes
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

4.5 stars rounded up.

I am having a difficult time reviewing this book. Since I have never read anything else written by Ben Coes, I had no preconceived notions about how this book and its characters should be written.

I like thrillers with kick-butt heroes, and yes, with this book, I did get a thriller, but the author seems to have forgotten the 'kick-butt hero' until the end of the book.

I have never read a book that affected me in this manner - it was written so effectively that I actually found myself hating a nation of people that I have no business hating. I found myself debating the eternal question, 'what would I do'?

This was one of the most graphic novels I have ever read. It was a fast read with many very short chapters. It was bloody and cruel and evil. I couldn't take my eyes off it. I can imagine this book as a movie.

The romance, well, we could have done without it. It just seemed to be filler. Totally wasted pages.

So here I remain, not sure whether to recommend this book highly or to say run far from this book as it will leave you questioning your morals and empathy.

I recommend this book to those that have a high tolerance to anything anti-American, who can read about horrors that are so cruel and left so many dead and injured, who have an imagination for the fictional parts of the book, and have a high tolerance to repetition.

*ARC supplied by the publisher MacMillan, the author, and NetGalley.

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 SYNOPSIS:  "CIA operative Dewey Andreas is America's last line of defense when terrorists take over Manhattan, targeting the U.N. and the President himself in The Island, the latest in this New York Times bestselling series by Ben Coes.

America is about to face the deadliest terrorist attack on it's soil since 9/11. Iran has been planning a revenge attack for years, with three goals in mind. Bring America to its knees. Assassinate the popular U.S. President J. P. Dellenbaugh. And neutralize their most successful agent, Dewey Andreas.

The first pre-emptive attack against Dewey Andreas fails but it worries the head of the CIA enough that he sends Dewey out of town and off the grid. But as intelligence analysts work as fast as they can to unravel the chatter on terrorist networks, Muhammed el-Shakib, head of Iran's military and intelligence agency, launches a bold strike. When the President arrives in New York to address the U.N., embedded terrorist assets blow up the bridges and tunnels that connect Manhattan to the mainland. Taking control of the island with it's hidden forces, they race to the U.N. in search of Dellenbaugh and to launch an even deadlier attack that will wreak unimaginable destruction on the country itself.

While a shocked country struggles to mount a counter-attack, a hopeless, outmanned and outgunned Dewey Andreas sneaks onto the island of Manhattan to fight a seemingly impossible battle.